A woman questioned in connection with hoax calls that sparked a three-day hunt for an abandoned newborn baby in Dublin, is said to be in a stable condition in hospital today after being found unconscious in Mullingar yesterday.
Mullingar gardaí launched a search for her after she had been reported missing yesterday morning.
The single mother of five was detained yesterday under Section 12 of the Criminal Law Act, which makes it an offence to deliberately waste Garda time by giving false information. Gardaí released her early this morning pending a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions whether or not to charge her with a criminal offence.
The search, involving dozens of gardaí and council officials at a cost of tens of thousands of euros, was sparked by a number of calls to the Samaritans and gardaí in which a woman claimed to have given birth to a baby boy in a derelict flat in the Ballymun area.
The caller was believed to be a teenage girl in a very distressed state.
Thousands of flats and houses were searched, yielding nothing. Gardaí eventually called off the search on Wednesday night, declaring that the calls were "not genuine".